Man (in the non-gendered sense) cannot live by politics alone; and to relieve the unmitigated horror that is the present Brexit situation, I’ve been digging back into my adolescent interests and enthusiasms for comfort and escape. A search in my attic today revealed a whole portfolio of paintings I made in my teens, some of which I now think are quite promising (I may post a few images here later), making me wonder why I abandoned the artistic career which everyone at the time thought I was marked out for, and became a dull academic historian instead. The history, of course, brought the politics along with it.

I also discovered some large bound and illustrated books I made about local East Anglian churches, which were one of my other deep interests, and still give me great pleasure. There’s nothing religious about this. As an agnostic I regard these beautiful buildings mainly as symbols of human endeavour, community and aspiration, rather than of any particular religion.

Here is the title page of one of them. The lettering, too, is mine; we didn’t have word processors to do this sort of thing for us sixty-odd years ago.